NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5414708" data-attributes="member: 80487">I'll call it a railroad if, when we try to high-tail it somewhere other than the hill giants' settlement, it's like trying to get out of Hobb's End (In the Mouth of Madness) -- but not due to any such supernatural feature of the world with which we can actually deal.I'll call it a railroad if we are likewise arbitrarily barred from joining the giants rather than massacring them, or if we have no choice but to go all the way down the line to "the finale" with Lolth. I call it a railroad when there is such a thing as "the line" to have "the finale" in the first place!However, this is all relative to a campaign. If those "rails" are presented as the Origins '78 Tournament, or simply as "playing through these modules", then there's no imposture in constraints that are necessary assumptions of the scenario.That's entirely separate from a campaign.To deal with one common aspect: If one considers the GDQ modules as "an adventure" in the sense of a dramatic series of events conforming to a script in the text (which is actually not how they are written, except in cursory framing equally applicable -- or disposable! -- if any one were used singly, as I recall***) then considerable "railroading" may be necessary to get full use of them. If that's how one sees them, and one does not want to "waste money" already invested in purchasing them, then there is strong incentive to rig the game.It would be unsporting to bring a character back into a campaign after going through a process rigged to ensure its survival to the end, with experience points and magic nonetheless accruing -- unless the other players got the same deal. It would be like playing a video game in the home version with a cracked and trained copy, then claiming that high score in the arcade.*** At any rate, I never met anyone who felt it necessary to run them as an "adventure path" (which jargon had yet to be invented). The implication that an adventure path is not a railroad to "fans of classic play" may be an inference from a false premise.</blockquote>

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